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High Level Control of A Light Endoscope holder Robot (LER)

High Level Control of A Light Endoscope holder Robot (LER) Based on the
Analysis of Laparoscopic Images

racking surgical instruments with a robotized endoscopic camera holder offers interesting perspectives for the high level control of a robotized camera holder. For instance, one of the instruments can be used as a « pointer » to move the camera at desired locations in the abdominal cavity.

However, the complexity of laparoscopic images (important variations depending on the patient and the imaging system, projection of fluid on the endoscope lenses,...) makes the detection of an instrument thanks to image analysis techniques difficult : to our best knowledge, the tracking of instruments is today based on the addition of markers or more complex devices on the instrument to simplify its detection in the images. Our approach aims at avoiding these modifications by gathering information on the position of the instruments in space thanks to our robotized camera holder.
These position measures are used to constrain the search of the instruments in the endoscopic images allowing the use of image analysis methods which would be too time-costly for a complete image.